


Brothers: Reflection

by MusicBooksNoReality



Series: Brothers [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Character Study, Dick Grayson Angst, Dick Grayson Has Issues, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne are Siblings, Dick Grayson and Jason Todd are Siblings, Dick Grayson-centric, Gen, Hurt Dick Grayson, Seizures, Tim Drake and Dick Grayson are Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:26:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22307134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicBooksNoReality/pseuds/MusicBooksNoReality
Summary: 'It was silent. The cave, empty and imposing, the silence so loud, Dick didn’t even want to breathe -- didn’t want to break the invasive nothingness. It was one of the few times, so very few, that Dick hated the silence.'Dick Grayson has to first fall -- crashing and tumbling and destructive -- before he can be changed.
Series: Brothers [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1605646
Comments: 19
Kudos: 522





	Brothers: Reflection

**Author's Note:**

> In this chapter Dick is struggling with his stress, but it isn’t until his family is fighting and they bring up his past failures that Dick begins to have a panic attack and then a seizure.
> 
> The song best used for Dick in this chapter would be Malevolence by Arcadia Ridge.
> 
> Thank you to the wonderful batfam_or_death for beta reading and becoming a friend. Looking forward to keep working with you!

It was silent. The cave, empty and imposing, the silence so loud, Dick didn’t even want to breathe -- didn’t want to break the invasive nothingness. It was one of the few times, so very few, that Dick  _ hated _ the silence.

Dick’s headache was already bad. He was on the worse end of a concussion, not that anyone knew that. His whole family was so used to concussions it wouldn’t be news at this point. Though the silence should help, his head was full of cotton balls. Thinking was hard, but his brain wouldn’t stop.

Thankfully, the quiet was gone as quick as it had entered, the cave resonating with the scream of the bikes Bruce had made for them.

Damian entered first, his bike screeching as loud as always. It sucked the air out of Dick’s lungs (why couldn’t he breathe? This wasn’t normal with concussions, Jesus Dick, just be normal and take a deep breath). Damian was younger than Dick was when he was Robin, but he was so much better. It felt good having someone truly ready for Gotham’s harsh streets able to defend and protect, but Dick’s heart broke every time he saw Damian in the new and improved Robin outfit, the pain of watching someone so young be so cruel and vicious and incredibly trained. No child should be able to take on five, six criminals at once, but Damian was the exception. It was in his blood, Talia’s and Bruce’s combined. And Dick couldn’t deny the sting that came from his own unfiltered thoughts; he wanted to include himself in that line. He wanted to be able to say he was Damian’s parent, his father, or at the least -- father figure. After all, it was his fault that Damian was Robin in the first place. He introduced Damian’s version of Robin on the streets, taught him brutality versus efficiency, he was the one who tamed the Heir to the Demon and he never received a thanks, nothing to suggest that Bruce was proud of him for doing the hard work that should have been done by the old man. But Bruce had been lost in the time stream at the time, Tim chasing after him. Dick was all Damian had. (Or was it the other way around?)

Next entered Tim, his bike softer than Damian’s. His entrance wasn’t as dramatic, not as attention seeking. Tim was made for stealth, it only made sense that he was quiet in most ways, including this one. But Dick felt his heart hurt even more. Tim was also young. Younger than he should be for a vigilante. He was only nineteen and had more on his shoulders then Dick did. He had a whole company to run, his own Titan team, he was Red Robin, had his own apartment. How dare Dick be stressed when Tim had so much more on his plate? It was unfair and rude. 

What surprised Dick was that Jason followed after Tim, entering the cave too. Dick tried to think of the mission the boys were on tonight and couldn’t quite remember if or why all three were needed but he couldn’t. Why was Jason needed but Dick wasn’t? It felt like betrayal, lingering in Dick’s already twisted gut. 

The two of them are still at odd ends these days. Jason still hated Dick and Dick still didn’t fully trust Jason to make competent and non-lethal decisions that would keep everyone safe -- including the perpetrator. He hated to admit it, but Dick couldn’t cloud his thoughts, they were so  _ loud _ , so bludgeoning. It was hard to bury them. 

He smiled at his family, his brothers, when Damian, unprovoked, launched himself to attack Tim. Dick lost his smile and was about to intervene but Jason stepped in before he could. Dick tried to hear Damian’s words, but they slurred together in his brain. Everything felt delayed. It wasn’t normal but Dick ignored it. It must have been his concussion. 

“Boys!” He shouted down to them. They all looked up at the platform. “Report and then bed. And no arguing! We’re all tired.”

He felt Damian’s scowl even when he turned his back and headed to the computer. He felt kind of stupid sometimes when he remembered how it was his fault that everything was ‘bat’-ified. Batmobile, batarangs, batcomputer. It was a childish thing, but he had been a child then. 

He stood by as the boys changed and showered. Reports took a while (especially when Damian and Tim were involved), and no one liked doing it while feeling gross.

Dick stood by while the three began the report, his brain humming and buzzing. He tried to focus on the boys and make sure they didn’t bicker, but it couldn’t last. He barely registered noise, it was all a blur, and it was only when Damian snapped something at Tim that Dick took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

Bruce would be disappointed, was Dick’s only thought. 

Completely disappointed. He was supposed to be the big brother, the protector, the mediator, the calm in the middle of the storm of brothers. And what would Alfred say? Bruce was the father, the man of the house, the control tower, but Alfred… Alfred was the patriarch. Bruce was supposed to be getting home soon anyways, his last meeting for the day ended a while ago, close to ten. He was probably stuck in the horrible Gotham traffic. Alfred had been the one to pick him up, so he would be stuck as well. There was a reason Bruce hated the company and left that to Tim, but even this meeting (and the work following it) had to include Bruce.

Why was it that they never behaved when Dick was in charge? Was it because he was the oldest? He was approaching thirty, and Damian was a teenager at thirteen, Jason and Tim in between the two at nineteen and twenty-three. Of course there would be fighting. Right? That’s how families worked. Even in the close knit circle of the circus there was fighting. The problem was they (his brothers) never  _ stopped _ fighting. It was starting to wear on Dick’s limitless patience. The three of them, always arguing, bickering, ‘sparring’, even drawing blood on occasion, and all of it because Dick couldn’t stop them.

It was frustrating. Irritating. Annoying. He was supposed to be helping!

Dick’s head started to split under the pressure. His headache was leading to tears beading in his eyes. He couldn’t take it much longer. He had already asked them to stop. It was just a stupid report… Damian was supposed to be working _ with _ Tim, not against him. And of course Jason had to come in and argue about what really happened during the case. It shouldn’t be causing this much of a headache. The concussion. It had to be the concussion. 

His subconscious whispered about how it was the stress, the weight of the world on his shoulders, and Dick had to physically restrain himself from scoffing aloud. It wasn’t stress. There was no reason for Dick to be stressed, none. He was a grown man, he should know how to deal with his issues, he  _ does _ know how to deal with them. It had nothing to do with all the stuff Dick has been going through, nothing to do with his job pressures, or his home life, nothing nothing nothing, he was just being dramatic.

Being a Gotham/Blüdhaven vigilante there was a never ending stream of criminals, drug cartels, muggers, various stages of mobs trying to form, established mobs, gangs (and yes, there was a difference between the two), all that Nightwing had to deal with, and sometimes alone at that. But he knew that when he became Nightwing and moved. He knew that. And that had nothing to do with his day job of dealing with all of that  _ and _ the intricacies that came with being a beat cop. The bad guys never actually went away to prison because everything was corrupt -- but he  _ knew that _ . That was just normal job stress, it shouldn’t affect him like this (not that it was).

There was the rag tag team of disbanded Titans that he kept thinking about but he liked being a brother and a leader to his team (family) of superheroes, it wasn’t stressful to think about them. Dick just needed to check in with them more often. He hadn’t talked to Raven in a while, Garfield too… Dick shook his head, trying to shake out the pain. Doesn’t matter, they were fine. He doesn’t need to worry, they’ll come to him if they need help (but what if they didn’t? What if something happened and he never checked in and -- and -- and --)

Well, there was one thing he could count to be stressed about; his building was raising rent and Dick wasn’t sure he could swing it without either moving out or digging into his trust fund. He hadn’t touched the account, even when he was given permission at eighteen. At this point it was like a challenge with himself to see how long he could go without it. But that didn’t matter. Dick would make it work, he always did. It was just life, he didn’t need to stress over that. People had it worse than he did and he needed to remember that.

His chest felt tight again. He took a deep breath, leaning over the table. Everything hurt. Damn concussion, damn headache! Dick was fine, he was okay. He just had to stop thinking for five seconds, anything. 

If only the fucking headache would go away then he could think straight! If he could just focus! The arguing only got louder, more aggressive in the background of Dick’s thoughts. The chatter started to keep in time with the thumping of Dick’s temples and finally he snapped.

“Guys! Please, for five minutes, just shut up! That’s all I’m asking for right now!”

“All your fuckin’ asking for?!” Jason turned and snapped with a ferocity that Dick felt it in his bones. The green rings in his little brother’s eyes grew brighter and Dick felt his heart ache at the reminder of his brother’s death. 

“You don’ ask for fuckin’ shit you fuckin’ bastard! First son, favored son! You spoiled rotten, little itty bitty filthy fuckin'  _ rich boy _ ! You don’ fuckin’ give a shit about us!” That one knocked the wind out of Dick. How could Jason think that? Dick loved him, cried when he had died, visited his grave, celebrated his revival. But it seemed as though Jason believed his own words. The taller man was tense with an anger hardly contained, his street accent popping a little more than normal. What had they been fighting about? It couldn’t have been about the report anymore. 

“You once fuckin’ left me beaten up in a fuckin’ ditch ‘cause you were fuckin’ busy! ‘Cause I had messed up your fuckin’ case, like I did it on purpose, like I wa’n’t a fuckin’ _ kid _ . Fuck you Goldie! Stay the fuck outta this!”

Damian rose to his defense, but Dick didn’t hear a word of it. The memory slammed into him like a bullet train.

He had done that. He had left Jason, newly Robin, newly adopted (adopted like Dick never was), bleeding out in an alley to follow a lead. It had been raining, cold, almost frozen that night. Dick could still feel the chill on his body from that, the  _ anger _ he had felt to his bones. It was a big night but… it had happened again, with a different Robin, a different brother, and Dick hadn’t left them in the cold. He made sure Tim had gotten home safely, case be damned. Oh God, how could Dick have done that? Was he really that horrible of a brother? His breathing increased a little.

Was Dick really that _ shit _ at being a big brother? He had been so angry with Jason, with Bruce, with everything, but Jason didn’t deserve that. He had only just started to show Jason the love he deserved when Dick went off world. He had only just started to love Jason… and then it went up in flames. Jason had died. Dick couldn’t even go to the funeral. He had failed him. Failed as a friend, a brother, as a decent person. His parents, may their souls be at peace, they would have been so disappointed in him. They raised him to be kind and loving and to help others, no matter what. That’s why Dick had chosen the Robin name.

And he had let it go to waste. He had stained the name, the title, he had created. There were no excuses, no reasoning that would let it go either.

His head threatened to split open some more. Dick leaned against the table in pain. He closed his eyes. Was there a chair around? He couldn’t stand much longer. Why couldn’t he get the image of Jason dying out of his head? Of Jason dying, hating Dick?

“You always take his side! You always defend him! Must be nice to have Robin handed to you on a silver platter! You didn’t earn it, not like I did, you parasite! You tried to kill me and got nothing but a reward! You’re rotten, absolute trash! You don’t deserve to be Robin! Dick has done nothing but ruin you and the Robin legacy by letting you taint it!”

He wanted to scream at them to stop but all that came out was a whisper of breath. His eyes were shut, so why was everything so bright? His eyes pounded in pain. The pressure was filling his whole head. Tears started to waterfall down his face, in pain and sadness. Disappointment. Regret.

Tim was right. But Dick had just wanted Damian to feel special, like he had a place with the family that was slowly falling apart. His father had just ‘died’ and Damian didn’t know what to do with himself, no one did. Tim wanted to go find a chance, chase it like a wild goose. Dick had to make a choice. He didn’t mean to hurt Tim. He didn’t even think of how Tim would take it. Is that why he chose the Red Robin name? Because he wasn’t ready to let go? Because Dick had taken away something Tim wasn’t ready to give up? 

His heart ached. Why today? Why now? What did he do to deserve this pain? All of his regrets slamming into him, one after the other.

Why couldn’t he feel balanced? Was the earth shifting?

“Grayson is a better brother than you could ever be! Your own parents didn’t even want you Drake, how could anyone? You’re a lazy, spineless, incorrigible excuse of a person. You had to beg to be Robin, even Father could see you were a worthless piece of space that didn’t deserve the title. It was good it was taken away from you, you had no right to it anymore! You were shit at being Batman’s partner, just like you’re shit at everything else you do!”

Dick should be stepping in. He should be moving. Why couldn’t he move? His head… God his head…

“Talia di’n’t want you either, Demon! Why’d’chu t’ink she shipped you off to daddy dearest? To train you? And you bought that?! You’re as stupid as you look t’en. I would know, she trained me too and you  _ still _ can’t beat me! You were a failure! You still are!” 

The ground… Why was it so close?

Why was Dick such a bad brother?

Why couldn’t his family just love each other?

“DICK!”

“GRAYSON!”

Why could he not feel his body?

“He’s having a seizure!”

“Get Bruce! GO DAMIAN! GO NOW!”

“Move the stuff ‘round him. He has’ta ride this out.”

“What’s wrong with him? Why a seizure? What causes seizures?”

“Dick, come on, focus on me. Squeeze my hand Dick.”

“What happened!?”

Dick was a bad brother. The universe had a sick way of punishing him for it too.

**Author's Note:**

> "How does stress trigger seizures?  
> We aren’t sure just why stress may trigger a seizure. Stress is an expected and unavoidable part of life. It is our body's reaction to any change that requires a physical and emotional response. Stress is known to cause worry, depression, frustration and even anger. Stress may affect people in many ways." -Epilepsy Foundation
> 
> Dick Grayson is like other people. He has worries, things he doesn't tell people, insecurities. He has trust issues. And he gets stressed.
> 
> People don't remember seizures, they black out and suddenly wake up somewhere new, but with this character study specifically I wanted to play with being in the head of someone having a seizure before they forget. Dick was the perfect candidate.


End file.
